Health minister expects more listeria infections
Aaron Motsoaledi also warns that new infections are likely in the Southern African region, with Namibia already reporting one case
The death toll from the listeriosis outbreak could be much higher as countries in the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) region do not have testing and monitoring to detect listeriosis cases. The disease is not a notifiable disease across Southern African countries‚ meaning doctors are not reporting each case to a centralised authority. On Thursday, Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi and Sadc health ministers and ambassadors held an emergency high-level interministerial meeting in Johannesburg to discuss the world’s largest listeriosis outbreak that started in SA. Many of the countries represented at the meeting import Tiger Brands’ Enterprise polony and cold-meat products. The Tiger Brands Polokwane factory had the ST 6 strain of listeria‚ which is responsible for 91% of all South African listeriosis patients‚ in 26 places. There have been 967 confirmed cases and 183 deaths from listeriosis in SA. But only one patient with listeriosis has been identified in the rest of Sou...
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